


LadyHawke

by Storyshark2005



Category: Cobra Kai (Web Series)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Hawk is conflicted, Kreese Kai, Lab Partners, Physics Class, Sam is a loner, eventual background LawRusso, navigating tough times, not exactly romance, sort of S3 compliant
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-06
Updated: 2021-01-06
Packaged: 2021-03-16 14:35:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,643
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28583601
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Storyshark2005/pseuds/Storyshark2005
Summary: Hawk’s world gets darker in Kreese Kai, and Sam is lost and alone on her own path. Both of them try to navigate the new world order.Tagline- “She pulls him out.”--
Relationships: SamHawk, Samantha LaRusso/Eli "Hawk" Moskowitz, Sameli, background or hinted LawRusso, pining Hawk for Moon
Comments: 14
Kudos: 51





	LadyHawke

**Author's Note:**

> This is an odd little fic, but I like the idea of these two interacting. Lots of fire!! Not sure if it will be Sam/Hawk endgame, this is more about two people navigating the new social order, trying to find a little peace amid the chaos.
> 
> Let me know what you think, I've got most of a second chapter, drop me a note if you'd like more!

_“There is a woman.”_

_“Your Grace?”_

_“A beautiful woman with alabaster skin and the eyes of a dove. She travels by night, only by night. Her sun is the moon..._

_Find her and you find the wolf. The wolf I want. The wolf who loves her.”_

_-_ From _Ladyhawke_ (1985)

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


Things are weird. 

Aisha’s parents pull her out of West Valley and into a STEM specialized magnet school across town. They take her car keys and there’s no more karate or happy hour at Applebees. 

Tory’s on probation, dropped out of school, working two jobs. He knows her mom is sick, that she’s taking care of her little brother, but she doesn’t answer her phone, and he has no idea where she lives. She’s not going to karate anymore.

Miguel is still in a neck brace in the ICU, doped to the gills on pain meds, but finally awake after three weeks in the grey depths of coma. Hawk hasn’t heard anything about the future, whether he’ll walk again, much less throw a roundhouse kick anyone’s way.

Hawk bites holes in his pens so hard his teeth and the tips of his fingers end up smudged black and blue. Last week at the doctor’s office, his parents paid extra for another MRI, and he had to talk them down from calling the lawyer and pressing charges against Demetri (it’d be a pussy move, he tells himself). His jaw and the back of his head still ache and he’s got minor whiplash from his neck snapping sideways under Demetri’s shoe, but it’s nothing he can’t fix with ice packs and aspirin. And concussions go away, it’s just time and darkness, that’s all. 

It’s barely the second week of classes, and he’s eating in the lunch room at the Cobra Kai table (or what was left of it) and everybody there looks to him, listens to _him,_ waits for him to laugh at their stupid jokes. He’s holding court, and for the first time in his life he’s at the head of the table, even if it’s round. And for some reason, he can’t enjoy it. Not fully, anyway, not enough to drown out the little constant itch at the back of his brain. It might be Miguel’s absence, or it might be the sight of Moon and Piper eating salad with their pinkies curled together across the room. 

Or it might be Samantha LaRusso, totally alone, sitting at Hawk’s old table-- _Eli’s_ old table, he should say. The same table he used to sit at with Demetri and Miguel, the one Demetri had joked has a wait list. Back when Demetri used to do all the talking for him. 

For Eli. 

Whatever. 

So now he’s sitting in Yasmine’s old chair, looking at Samantha LaRusso in Eli’s old chair, picking at her fruit cup with a white plastic spoon. She looked pale, and drawn, her mouth pulled down deep in the type of neutral frown that said she was probably settling down for a very long year. 

It was a frown of the friendless. Of the expatriated. 

Mitch elbows him in the ribs, drawing Hawk’s attention with a joke about LaRusso and Keene and conjugal visits. Hawk laughs, because it’s funny, but also because he likes this view a lot better than the old one of Yasmine and her mean, twisted face staring at his lip from across the lunch room, hissing into Moon and LaRusso’s pretty, porcelain ears. 

He eats his cheeseburger and tries not to think about the hiss of oxygen tubes, crawling like snakes into Miguel’s nostrils.

Things are weird.

***

Karate practice is different, too. He misses Miguel’s reliable presence and his goofy grin and lame jokes, but it’s kind of nice, being the favorite. Sensei Kreese has him warm the class up every day-- the privilege only diminished slightly, the class size was about half of what it was, but Sensei Kreese reminds them that the ones that left were the weaker ones, anyway. 

Kreese also reminds them that they are all brothers here, that Cobra Kai is for life, that it never dies. People do, but not creed, and there’s something comforting in that.

Red asks if that was true, does that mean Sensei Lawrence was still Cobra Kai, even with the betrayal of Miguel?

Kreese’s face twitches, just a little, and he tells them to get down on their knuckles and give him fifty.

***

It’s not really a surprise that Samantha LaRusso is in his AP Physics class. They’d been taking the same advanced courses for years, now, even if she hadn’t noticed before. It _is_ a surprise, however, when Palmer puts the hat in front of Hawk’s face, and tells him to pull a name, and he pulls out a strip of paper with _‘LaRusso, Samantha’_ typed neatly in a sensible serif font.

“Moskowitz, LaRusso--” Palmer plucks the paper from Hawk’s numb fingertips. “Table 3. Get your meter sticks up front, there’s a stopwatch on your iPad.”

LaRusso’s fingers clench white around her lab book, and she doesn’t look at him as she takes her seat. Her nail polish is a chipped royal blue, ragged at the edges and just remnants of what it had been the day of the fight.

They have to open their lab books to the first lab of the semester, something juvenile and frankly condescending involving a toy car and ramps. He tells her in short tones that he’ll take all the measurements and she can record them on the iPad. She nods and writes down what he reads off and he doesn’t look at her the whole time and he’s pretty sure she doesn’t look at him, either.

Palmer stops by their station and says something asinine about how ‘science is collaborative’ and asks them questions he probably got out of the teacher’s manual. LaRusso answers before Hawk can, which he realizes he was waiting for, because that’s how it used to be with Demetri, talking so Eli didn’t have to.

Demetri wasn’t here either, he was doing this year remote, and working a pre-college internship for an astrophysics professor at UCLA. Hawk only knows that because his parents were lecturing him over dinner about the colleges _he_ was applying for.

LaRusso clears her throat, tells him he’s putting the meter stick in the wrong place. He gives her a hard glare, but corrects the placement.

They get through the rest of the lab, and it’s fine.

*** 

She floats down hallways by herself, and eats lunch by herself, and Hawk doesn’t see her talk to anybody except Moon who takes pity on her once in a while, but who is too distracted by Piper to make a significant dent in the radioactive bubble radiating around her body at least a foot in every direction. Even the losers who sense the shockwave-- the _opportunity--_ coming from this great of a fall from the social ladder seem kept at bay.

Hawk remembers what it was like to walk down these halls, everyone looking through you. It was horrible, because worse than being stared at (the inevitable slip of the eyes down, down to the scar cutting up from his battered, freakish lip) was not being seen at all. 

He can see it happening to her in real time. The slow, dull transition from being the talk of the hallways, to being forgotten and seen right through. Things happened and new stars rose to fill the gaps of the fallen. Football and soccer and Glee Club started, people found their places, found their people (the freaks, the goths, the geeks, and the jocks) and in the grand game of high school musical chairs, the music faded out and the ones left standing had to float slowly to the sides of the room, out of sight and out of mind.

A month into class, Samantha LaRusso is starting to become a memory. And she didn’t seem to have anything to say about it.

***

Cobra Kai throws the first party of the year, out at the Canyon. Aisha drops by but doesn’t stay long, she has to get back before her parents see through whatever flimsy lie she told them. She hugs Hawk and tells him she’s doing good, but misses everybody, and she asks him how lessons are going with Kreese. He tells her they’re better than ever, and neither of them talk about Tory. She does tell him she saw Miguel that weekend, that he was still sedated, but the doctors were optimistic. He makes a lame excuse and promises to visit this week.

It’s after eleven, his brain is hazy with Natty Light and vodka, and he’s thinking about the first night he’d met Moon, sitting on driftwood and watching her hair catch fire in the setting sun, her full pink lips and her square jaw and her full attention, all trained on him.

He turns back from the water, and his eyes flick up to the parking lot, and for a minute he thinks he sees her, _Moon in the moonlight--_

But the hair isn’t right and he sees it’s LaRusso, haloed in the glare of the parking lot. She’s standing at the top of the bank clutching a beach bag, scanning the figures around the bonfire, probably looking for Moon. But Hawk knows she won’t find her because Moon and Piper had wandered off twenty minutes ago, somewhere down the beach to hold hands and kiss and dip their toes in the water.

He sees her shoulders freeze up, right when their eyes meet, and he pulls his beer down lower, feeling the slickness of the condensation under his fingertips. He feels a strange shiver of nerves, either for her or because of her, he’s not sure which.

She turns around, the large cloth bag swinging around to bump against her hip, and she leaves.

***

She looks terrible, on Monday. Barely any makeup on, maybe just a little mascara. Her hair was pulled carelessly back into a bun at the nape of her neck. Which, it wasn’t like she was ugly, but it was shocking compared to her usual effort. She sat down heavily, pulled out her lab book and a pencil, and started filling out the lab sheet before the bell had even rung.

They’re working on Newton’s Second Law, a motion sensor and weights on a string pulling carts down a track. They both could have filled out the lab report without doing the experiment, this class wouldn’t get interesting until second semester.

“So why’d you show up on Friday?” He twirled his pen around his fingers, watching her slide the little weights onto the metal hanger, like coins into a jukebox.

She turns back to the lab report, crosses something out-- erases, and rewrites. 

He grabs the weight hangar, and pulls the weights off. She’d forgotten to calibrate the scale.

“Chickened out, huh?” He presses the button, watches the numbers tick up. “Fifty grams.” 

Her mouth presses into a thin line. She writes the number down.

“Moon asked you to come?” 

“It was a stupid idea,” she says, finally, in a tight tone.

He snorts. “Yeah. She loves that peace-keeper shit.” 

“She feels sorry for me. That’s all.”

He eyed her bare nails. All the blue was gone.

“It’s better than sitting in a hospital with a broken back.” He picks up the pen again, the pads of his fingers catching on all the tooth-shaped dents. “It’s a real Helen of Troy thing you got goin’ on there, huh?” 

She stares down at the paper report, her jaw working open, closed, like she wanted to say something. She doesn’t, though, and Hawk feels justified that he’d shut her up properly, because it was _her_ boyfriend, and _her_ father’s dojo that had put Miguel in the hospital and Keene on the docket, one coffee-less judge away from getting tried as an adult.

But here she was sitting in Physics class measuring little wood carts on a track, studying the consequences of eternal forces like gravity and velocity, when she should know better than most that every action has an equal and opposite reaction. 

That choices have consequences.

The bell rings, and Palmer starts talking.

***

His life settles down, finds a routine. He wakes up early _(pushups, situps, pullups on the hanger over his door)_ and he takes a shower, spends an hour on his hair. He drives to school, goes to class, bites at his pen and sits through Calc, Advanced Coding, California History, English, and three days a week he sits next to LaRusso noticing things like the state of her hair and the color of her nails and they don’t talk about anything but the assignment in front of them. 

Karate is 4-6 every day for the advanced class. Mitch is loyal and laughs at all of his jokes but he sucks at karate, still slow and clumsy. Edwin isn’t half bad, but he doesn’t say much. Tory says she’s coming back soon, but she’s still got hours of community service to check off. Hawk gets stronger under Kreese’s smile and his crossed arms but it’s not like it used to be. There’s a gaping hole at his shoulder, he finds himself almost texting Miguel for a few weeks, thumb hovering over the name on his Favorites list.

He goes home every night and finishes his homework in front of his computer, and sometimes he spends a half hour on the couch with his parents when he feels guilty enough, watching TV with glassy eyes, fingers itching for his phone while his mother pops popcorn in her slippers, and his Dad tries to make stilting conversation, a pained, tired look on his face. 

One of those nights he realizes he needs his physics book for an assignment, the one sitting in his locker at school. He doesn’t have Sam’s number, but he finds her on Instagram and private messages her about the assignment. She snaps a picture out of her book, with the simple caption _here u go._

He’s about to type “thank you” but thinks better of it, and types a thumbs-up emoji instead. 

***

She stops going to lunch. At least, she’s not sitting in her usual seat, the one he was calling his _old seat_ in his head. Three new losers have taken up her spot, scrawny kids from the marching band, or something like that. Who the fuck cared.

He elbows Mitch and asks where LaRusso went, and adds, like he doesn’t give a shit-- “She’s usually staring into her applesauce.”

Mitch snorts, grinning. “I dunno, man, she’s probably showing the football team a good time under the bleachers, know what I mean?” 

Mitch laughs and Hawk wraps his pizza crusts up in foil paper and finishes his chocolate milk. 

***

It’s Sunday. 

He hasn’t done his hair yet, hasn’t done much of anything yet besides take a shower and pull himself off, watch the evidence swirl down the drain as the water beats at his back, the skin blossoming a heated, relieved pink as oxytocin floods through his body in a soft rush. 

He’s laying on his back on his bed, a towel around his waist. He grabs his phone, watches Moon and Tory and a few other people’s Snapchats. He opens Instagram and mindlessly doubletaps a few posts, until he finally notices the little red (1) over the message box. 

It’s a message from Aisha:

_ > hey just FYI I talked to Camen. She said they are lowering his meds enough he’s more awake, they are allowing visitors _

_ > want to go with? _

He gets up to do his hair, and calls Aisha on speakerphone. 

***

He meets Aisha in the hospital parking lot. Miguel’s moved rooms at least once, and it’s nice to be able to follow her down the hallways with purpose. Aisha thought ahead and brought flowers, and when they get to the room she slips them into an unoccupied space on the windowsill on the far side of the bed.

Miguel is sleeping. He looks thin and his skin dull and pale. Rosa is there, and she gets up to hug Hawk and says some words he doesn’t understand. They sit a while watching tv, Aisha knows a little Spanish and chats with Rosa. Hawk keeps a hand on Miguel’s elbow. 

He finally pulls in an uneasy breath, blinks wearily, and cracks his eyes open. A nurse comes in and Hawk backs off while she adjusts a few things and asks Miguel soft questions. She turns back and tells them she’ll bring some dinner up for Miguel, but that they can talk to him.

“Hey,” Aisha croons softly, a hand at Miguel’s shoulder. 

Miguel looks at Aisha, then at Hawk. 

“Hey,” he says back. His voice is dry and tired, but his smile is everything but.

 _“El Serpiente,”_ Hawk whispers, clasping his hand. His throat is sticky, almost glued shut, but he feels lighter than he has in weeks, almost giddy. He doesn’t cry. “Hey, brother.”

***

They talk while Miguel eats off of a plastic tray. The meal is a bewildering assembly of dubiously healthy side dishes surrounding a plain hot dog. He makes a joke about hospital food and repeat customers. It doesn’t really land, but the rest of the conversation is blissfully normal. Hawk updates Miguel on school, the new social order. Aishes tells them about private school and how it sucks not doing karate anymore.

Aisha goes to the bathroom, and Miguel pushes his tray back.

“Have you seen Sam?” Miguel asks.

“I’ve seen her around,” Hawk shrugs. “Why?

“I need a favor,” Miguel hedges. “I need you to watch out for her.”

 _“What?_ Dude--”

“Look. She doesn’t really have many friends. Especially with Keene gone.”

“I don’t know why you care. Her boyfriend is the one who did this to you.”

“I’m tired of fighting them. I’m just saying...if anyone’s giving her a hard time, I’m asking you to help her.”

“I’m not gonna be her friend.” 

“I’m not asking you to. Just keep an eye on her. Make sure she’s doing okay.”

Aisha comes back. Miguel stares at Hawk until he reluctantly gives a stiff nod. 

***

Aisha calls Bert, and they all meet for happy hour at Applebees. They find their old booth, and the waitress doesn’t look twice at Hawk’s fake ID. Besides the empty space where Miguel should be, it’s just like old times.

“He doesn’t really remember much of the fight,” Aisha crunches down on a mozzarella stick, shrugging across the table at Bert.

Hawk stares down into his beer, content to listen. He thinks with any luck, soon they’ll have Miguel back, and he and Hawk can split an order of fried pickles.

Tory comes up.

“She’s at North Hills, right?”

“Yeah. She’s planning on coming back to Cobra Kai, though.”

“After she gets done picking cans out of the ditch,” Bert jokes. 

“At least it’s an excuse. You two don’t have one.” Hawk gives them each a measured look. “We need you guys.”

Aisha winces. “My parents are still pretty freaked out. And without Sensei Lawrence...” she shrugs, trailing off. 

“It’s not Cobra Kai without Sensei Lawrence,” Bert nods. 

Hawk scoffs. “Sensei Kreese founded Cobra Kai, he taught Sensei Lawrence everything he knows. Sensei Kreese _is_ Cobra Kai.” 

“Not the Cobra Kai I joined,” Aisha shakes her head. 

“It was a pussy move,” Bert grouses into his fajita. “How Kreese took the dojo from Sensei Lawrence.” He looks up at Hawk, forehead creased. “That wasn’t what Cobra Kai was about.” 

***

Monday, Physics class starts normal enough. Besides a stiff nod, he doesn’t say anything to Sam before Palmer starts lecturing on the new unit. They take notes and Palmer drones on and shows a couple of videos to demonstrate the upcoming lab. Finally, Palmer’s nerdy atomic clock (the numbers were elements from the Periodic Table, with atomic numbers corresponding to the correct time) hits 12:25 and the sound of chairs scraping across the tile floor signals lunch time.

Hawk closes his book and stashes his notes and by the time he looks up, Sam was up from her seat, hurrying out the door before the rest of the class, purse swinging in her wake.

He hears Miguel’s voice, _keep an eye on her. Make sure she’s doing okay._

“Shit,” he mutters. The things he does for his brother. 

***

“Where were you at lunch?”

The question pops out of his mouth. She’s stacking books up to raise the angle of the ramp, up which they are launching spring-loaded carts. They’re studying spring potential energy converted into kinetic energy, drawing free-body diagrams, all that shit.

She looks up, startled. “What?”

“You weren’t at lunch today. Or last week.” 

She stacks the last book, eases the ramp in place. “I’ve been eating outside.”

“Why,” he snaps, keeping his gaze hard.

“Because I want to.”

“Because you don’t want to sit at the loser table.” He watches her, wonders if she remembers that he used to sit at that table, if she’d ever noticed him back when she was popular.

She shakes her head. “Why do you care?” 

“I don’t,” he scoffs. “You could sit with Moon, you know. Quit moping around like a loser.”

She rolls her eyes. “What, and spend the whole time watching her and Piper make puppy eyes at each other? No thanks.” 

Hawk laughs despite himself, the sound falling from his mouth without a thought, and before he can regret it she’s smiling up at him, the expression transforming her face back into something rather stunning, and he feels like a total dope, suddenly understanding what Miguel was mooning about all last year.

They get back to work, and Hawk tries to concentrate on the charts and diagrams, and not the small, tentative smile she wore for the rest of class.

***

**Author's Note:**

> Oh, also-- what do you guys think about a ship name?? First fic of the ship, let's christen her together!
> 
> A. SamHawk (I kind of like this one...)  
> B. Sameli   
> C. (other ideas?)


End file.
